Old Website Problems with Software Updates.

  • Resolved PWDesigns

    (@pwdesigns)


    1 year, 2 months ago

    Hi, I inherited a WordPress website and would like your opinion as to how best resolve this situation. The website was built several years ago and only the client has been making updates to the website content. There must have been 3 different developers on the website over its lifetime. So we have Visual Composer, Elementor, & Wp Bakery. Several Form plugins, and duplicates of other items. It is running php version 7.4 and WordPress 6.3.5. The theme being used is not compatible with any php level above 7.4. Anytime I attempt to update the php version> Critical Error. I attempted to update the Theme via the databases to a more current theme, while the php update caused a Critical error, the critical error remained. I returned it to php 7.4 for now.

    Question #1: The order of the updates: Is there any way to update the WordPress software while you have a Critical Error on the website caused by a php update? If so how? Or should I have updated WordPress first and then php?

    Question #2: Which would you choose? A or B

    A. GoDaddy has offered to let us pay for WP Support, but is it possible to fix these software updates and keep the pages, posts, & media as is. What will be the condition of the website when they are done?

    B. I exported the pages, posts to another website on my test server to validate which of the 21 plugins I could delete. I configured a new theme. Should I just delete the whole website, update php, then reinstall WordPress and copy the files back?

    What would you do? My goal is to minimize any downtime.

    Thanks in advance for your help.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • catacaustic

    (@catacaustic)

    1 year, 2 months ago

    If there’s an issue where a required theme or plugin is not compatible with anything higher than PHP version 7.4, then the only remedy is to remove that plugin/theme before you update PHP to something newer. Nothing else is going to work. If you try and do anything else you will always get that same critical error, no matter what.

    As for the various page builders, form plugins, etc, that’s going to be harder. You would need to know if each one is being used before you remove it. If it’s been done by multiple people over time, then there’s a good chance that all of them are in use at some point or other. The only solution for this is to choose the one that you want to use, and change all of the pages/posts/etc that use the other page builders to use your chosen one. That’s easier said then done sometimes as not everything is going to be easy to port across like that.

    Thread Starter PWDesigns

    (@pwdesigns)

    1 year, 2 months ago

    That was the perfect sequence of events. Thankfully when I set up my test site, I knew which editor to keep and which ones I could discard. You can’t believe all the plugins I’ve deactivated. Thanks again.

    BigAl

    (@guydagar)

    1 year ago

    Hi. I have been having a similar issue: WP backups created with All-In-One Backup Extension some years ago with PHP 7.4. Unfortunately, the theme, Store Pro by InkHive, is not updatable, at least I haven’t had any response from InkHive (3 times I contacted support), so I am stuck with the last version v2.3.1 and it will not work with PHP later than 7.4. I have tried removing WP, updating PHP incrementally from 7.4 to 8.0 to 8.1, then, installing a fresh copy of WP and then the theme, and it doesn’t work, still get the critical error. It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have six websites using the same theme with the same problem. Any other ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    catacaustic

    (@catacaustic)

    1 year ago

    You need to follow what I said above.

    Nothing else is going to work. If you try and do anything else you will always get that same critical error, no matter what.

    If your theme is not able to be updated, then you’re stuck with using that and lower PHP/WordPress versions.

    The only way to “fix” that is to find where the code is crashing and re-program those parts, or choose a different theme that does work on higher versions.

    There are no other options.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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